


Watching

by misreall



Series: Stories From the Bookstore Basement, Or : Flitcraft's [3]
Category: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Genre: Blatant Affection, F/M, Kissing, Masturbation, Naked Cuddling, Porn Watching, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23472604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: Circumstances beyond anyone's control mean Kay and Adam have to shelter apart for a few days.
Relationships: Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Stories From the Bookstore Basement, Or : Flitcraft's [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683517
Comments: 58
Kudos: 80





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanguineous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguineous/gifts).



> A sequel to In Place.

A little over two weeks into sheltering in place together Adam and Kay ran into a snag.

Adam’s erasable, introvert ways did not turn into an unclimbable, brick wall that Kay would desperately butt her head against because she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t respond to her. Though he was at heart a cranky old man and very set in his ways, he had also been alone for a long time and had learned to appreciate company.

Like Pai Mei in  _ Kill Bill Vol. 2 _ , which he was very surprised to learn was one of Kay’s favorite movies. “You have violent taste for a woman who wears bras and knickers with pink bunnies on them.”

She turned and looked at him, her eyes big behind those massive glasses, “My boyfriend drinks blood and can rip a person’s throat out with his bare hands.” Turning back to the television, eating popcorn, “I know my own mind, thank you.”

Nor, for that matter, was it Kay generally considering she might break off one of the table legs and whitte it to a point when Adam stopped playing the guitar at the same place in the piece of music he was working, snarled at nothing and then started again for the ninety-seventh time because he couldn’t make it work. 

Only that one time.

And she’d worked through it.

Unlikely and peculiar as it seemed to both of them, for two people who had lived alone and liked it - most of the time - they got along rather beautifully. 

While it certainly helped that they had an excellent bookstore upstairs in addition to Adam’s own massive personal library, and that their basically nocturnal lifestyle meant they could take long, undisturbed walks almost every night, it was mostly that they got along. 

Rather beautifully.

They’d have a few hours to themselves each day - Kay before the sun rose, Adam before it set - while the other slept. When together they would read to each other, watch movies, mostly old ones in black and white, he would compose and then take breaks to play for her, she would write long blog posts for the store and even longer emails to whoever she owed them to. Twice a day she would go upstairs to check the voice and physical mail, feed Cobweb, and change his litter.

The cat would come out, sniff, get too much Adam from her, hiss, and run away, which was turning out to be the only downside of sheltering in the basement of the bookstore. 

Until the second Saturday. 

Kay had spent much of the night in the store, creating gift cards since they were the only thing they could still sell and ship out for some unknowable reason. Since they weren’t reopening any time soon she’d let it go for a while. That night, however, there was a lovely rain outside, and she enjoyed sitting behind the counter, sipping coffee and ringing up the cards while the drops splashed lightly on the windows and in the quiet, empty street. 

After a few hours Cobweb even deigned to curl his fuzzy, chunky body up on the counter where she was working, albeit just out of arm’s reach, yet despite her having left the door to the basement open so she could hear Adam playing. He had his violin out for the first time in months. When she stretched her arm out the cat allowed her to softly stroke the top of his head between his ears, while the music climbed the stairs and wound between the shelves to serenade her, Kay thought the world was pretty perfect just then.

And it was.

Until she finally went back down.

Adam had put the violin down and was sprawled out on his couch, shirtless - which was not rare and which Kay liked much more than she would have thought - and reading the Stephen Fry novel she’d recommended to him. She stood in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs and watched him whipping through the pages at that incredible rate at which he was able to consume words. Once or twice he even smiled with a bit of a huff, which was the Adam version of hysterical laughter. His shaggy mane hung over one armrest, his long, pale feet were propped on the other. 

One of the most dangerous predators in the world. 

One of the most beautiful creatures, too. 

Looking around at his place she thought, “Also one of the biggest slobs.”

All hers. 

Stepping down into the room, she started to ask, “What do you think of-” when Adam bolted off of the couch, the book flying from his hand, all so fast she couldn’t see him move. He cocked his head back and forth, sniffing, his eyes terribly empty, his whole body tense and vibrating as if he were about to do … something terrible.

When he finally focused on her, his eyes weren’t quite as empty, and his fangs weren’t just out, they were prominent. They’d grown out so quickly he’d scraped his lower lip with one of them and a thin trickle of blood, now almost human-looking from his drinking her regularly, stained the corner of his mouth.

“Kay….” His voice was guttural and low enough to scrape the ceiling of hell. “Come here….” He put out his hand. 

His nails had grown, too. 

For the first time in a long time, Kay was scared. 

With a gulp, she stepped back onto the stair to hide behind the wall, “Ididn’tmeantostartleyou!” she garbled out, holding the door frame, knowing she would never make it upstairs. Not even up  _ one _ stair.

Nothing.

Not a sound.

Not that there would be.

The one time Adam had hunted her it had been so quiet….

Finally, she stood up straight, fixing her skirt. “Adam?”

“Shit!” he sounded like himself.

“Are you alright?”

“Give me a minute. Don’t move. Ok, don’t move for just a second. The air coming down the stairs pushed your scent towards me and … just stay  _ there _ .”

“You smell me all of the time.”

“Not like … fuck.…” 

She heard a sound that was possibly a very fast fist hitting a concrete wall through makeshift soundproofing. Again and again, as fast as the rain had been falling.

Then it slowed and slowed and stopped. “It’s ok. You can come in.” He sounded muffled, but sane.

Adam had pulled on a shirt and shoes and had one of the scarves he wore for going out wrapped twice around his mouth. “Shit,” he said again, “I can still smell  _ it _ . Fuck! I can’t find my masks. Fuck!”

“Your medical masks? Since they were all still in the packaging I donated them to the hospital,” Kay said. 

“Of course you did. Shit!” Adam muttered like he was talking to himself, then he lifted his head and sniffed.

“Are you mad?” Kay had heard about the hoarding and since Adam had eased up a bit on his some of his fears he hardly ever wore them any longer.

“No, baby, I’m not mad. I’m not mad, and I’m not surprised. I just could have really used one right now.” He backed into the kitchenette where she could hear him pacing around like it was a cage. “Fuck!” 

“You already said that,” she called out, still standing in the door to the stairs.

“I still mean it! Ok, listen, um, you’re menstruating, right?”

Even though there were very few places on her body that Adam hadn’t touched, or put his mouth for that matter, Kay had never had a discussion about  _ that _ with any of her past boyfriends, or any man, since she’d only ever had female gynecologists, as logic dictated. So she blushed, rather painfully.

“Er, yes. It started first thing tonight. Actually. Is that what is-?” 

Oh, god!

From the kitchen, Adam could hear Kay give a gasp that would have done a Victorian maiden aunt justice. He could actually picture her putting her crossed hands against her breastbone, her eyes large and scandalized.

It was hilarious, except it was also no laughing matter.

Through luck or weird timing, they hadn’t been together when she was having her period since they’d started fucking regularly, and more significantly, since he’d started drinking her as often he could without causing her to get anemic. The previous month Kay had been away that week visiting friends out of state, and the month before that he’d still been denying how he felt about her, mostly from guilt and as well as being a fucking moron, which meant she rarely stayed at his place. 

Being what he was, Adam’s sense of smell was exceptionally strong, and all predator’s could smell blood. He was always aware of it when women around him were having their periods, and while it might make him a little hungrier than usual it rarely had much effect on him. There were those like him who had a special affinity for that particular delicacy, but he’d never been one. 

It was also common knowledge that those like him who took zombie -, no, he was trying to stop saying that, who took on humans to drink directly from who menstruated had to be careful around them because it could send them into a frenzy. There were always stories of accidental killings, savagings, really. 

Having been a bottle drinker for so long, Adam had just forgotten, like a great, big asshole. God, what if it had happened when they had been in bed together, if he’d woken up with her just laying there smelling like  _ that _ ? 

Adam didn’t scare easily. 

But the thoughts of what he had thought of doing to Kay scared the shit out of him.

Pacing, pushing his hands through his hair over and over, the scent of her was driving him crazy. It was like he was starving to death. In his mind he bit her everywhere, his fangs ripping her open so he could get at all of her blood. 

All of the blood he’d drunk in his life also seemed to have ended up in his prick, which was not helping his judgment either. He was wanted to lick her clean, then fuck her while he drained every, single, last drop from her.

At some point, the pacing had brought him unconsciously to the kitchen door and he literally had to put his back to it and set his legs, digging his now long nails through his denim and into his thighs to keep from bolting in and devouring Kay. 

Like some Canadian fucking bear, or like a goddamned werewolf. Those assholes were always eating people and then saying “Ooops!”

“Kay,” he tried to sound normal, talking around his fangs, which were so long he probably looked like a sabretooth guitar player. “You have to go home. You have to leave right now and stay at your place until you stop bleeding.”

“Ok,” she said promptly, “goodbye.”

God fucking bless his sensible girl.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The screen was badly cracked from when he had thrown it at a wall because the sound of the ringtone irritated him, so it was harder to text, * _ Be careful. Don’t go out unless you have to. Stay six feet away from everyone. And don’t let me in if I show up at your place _ .*

A few seconds later, she responded with a thumbs up, and a note, * _ Please put out food and water for Cobweb. Wear your gloves so he won’t smell you on his kibble. Thank you _ .*

He almost ripped the door off of his fridge getting to the blood.

It was quite late, or early, as Kay walked very quickly to her apartment, purse hugged tightly to her chest, cellphone clenched in her hand, the streets were entirely silent. The rain had stopped, but it dripped from the still mostly bare tree limbs, the eaves of the old houses, the streetlights. With everything so quiet she was certain she could hear every drop landing in every puddle.

It would have been eerie, or outright frightening if she hadn’t just left all of that. She let herself into her apartment, exhausted and trying to remember what food she might still have on hand. After taking a shower to clean off the cold, sticky fear sweat she crawled into bed in her oldest pajamas with a box of Fruit Loops that she fell asleep eating.

For the next three nights Adam drank his reserve, non-Kay blood, played the heavily distorted, feedback-heavy, atonal music that she found unbearable, and took long walks, often passing her apartment a few times a night, fighting the urge to ring her bell or call.

It was sheer, bloody torture. Though he and Eve would spend months, sometimes more, apart, when they had first fallen in love they had been together every waking and resting moment for ten years. He’d looked forward to the same thing with Kay, depending on how their sheltering in place experiment went. 

He stood in front of her building, like some kind of crazy stalker, which he basically was and fucking pined for her. 

If he was going to be this crazy every month how was this going to work?

The fourth night, they talked on the phone. “I am done with, um, that, so I was thinking of coming back. I took a really long bath, so I should be clean enough,” she added. 

Adam wanted her back. Needed her back. 

He was scared shitless.

“I think we should give it one more night. Just to be sure.” Adam said.

“I’d really like to come back. I left all three books I’m in the middle of there, along with most of the clothes I feel like wearing. And I miss you.”

“Let’s be safe.”

He put her off the next night, too.

“I miss you too. Believe me, I do. I am … fuck I am so horny I might as well be alive, but I want to be certain.”

When he did it the sixth night Kay sat and frowned at nothing for a while and then went to Flitcraft’s anyway. The bookstore smell was comforting, as was the fact that it was clear that Adam had also cleaned Cobweb’s litter box. She wished she could have seen that.

The door to the basement was still open and she half expected Adam to hear her on the stairs, but there was a lot of noise coming from his place. 

Not music.

Noise.

No. Not noise.

Moaning.

And groaning.

Female moaning and groaning.

And panting and whining and shouting and tense profanity and the sounds of flesh slapping on flesh and of ... of … wetness….

Kay was really starting to hate that staircase. Something bad seemed to happen every time she walked down it. She could turn around and walk right out. She could. But she wouldn’t. She just really hoped whoever the woman down there was, she wasn’t a vampire, too.

Straightening her outfit, wishing she was wearing something other than an old plaid skirt and a white blouse with a pixie collar with lace on it and her vintage penny loafers complete with wheat pennies, she stepped down the last few stairs. 

Ready for anything. Really.

Except what she saw.

The television was on, the big floor console model. On the screen two white women were talking. One was standing behind a desk at what looked like a college library, dressed rather like Kay but with even larger breasts, the other, who was rather boyish-looking, wearing jeans and a Rituals of Mine t-shirt, was desperately trying to negotiate some rather large fines over a lost copy of Dorothy Allison’s short stories. 

Eventually, they worked out a deal. 

And Adam….

Adam wasn’t watching actually. His eyes were closed, his jeans were open, his penis was in his fist, and he was moving incredibly slowly. As fast as he could move, he could apparently move just as slowly if he wanted.

She could barely see movement at first. The very tip was visible in that enormous hand, glistening and nearly blue from the terrible, teasing way he treated himself. Like he had been at it for hours.

Kay licked her lips, afraid to move.

Then he moved a little faster, with a loose ease to his wrist even as he squeezed hard enough to make her almost wince. Even more she wanted to slide her hand under his so she could feel his cock on the inside of it and the hardness of his palm and rough fingers on the inside, guiding her up and down movements.

If she wasn’t afraid of his noticing her if she moved, Kay would have happily at least slid her hand into her panties if she couldn’t slide it up and down him.

She knew Adam now, how he looked and sounded when he was close. Snarling darkly, his free hand clutched at the back of the sofa, shredding the velvet.

The arch of his back was high, the arch of his neck as well, and his hair was a wild, moving corona as he tossed it from side to side. A low, racking sound slipped out of him, and he bit his lower lip, planting his feet and now fucking his hand.

Kay gulped, glad the television was so loud. 

Wet rolled down the backs of his long fingers.

Wet rolled down the inside of her thighs.

He had himself so worked up, so utterly undone, he didn’t know she was there, which is why when he moaned, “Kay…” as his hips rose and rocked, as he shuddered and his shoulders dug into the cushion and he came in hard, wracking spurts, she automatically answered, “Yes?” For the second time in a week, he flew off of the couch like he’d been fired from a rocket. 

“Jesus Christ!” he shouted, pulling up and hastily zipping his jeans.

“You didn’t want me to come back so you could watch pornography and masturbate?” 

“What? No. Jesus fuck,” he started to push his hair back, realized he what he had all over his hand, which he hastily wiped on his shirt that he then took off and threw into a corner. “I was watching that because you weren’t here.”

Slightly uncomfortably, because of how aroused she still was, Kay walked over to the DVR and looked at the case, “Lesbian Librarians Vol. 4.” She turned to look at him, curious, “Do you have the first three volumes as well?” 

Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, which Kay felt would make her dizzy if she tried it, he took it out of her hand and ejected the disk to put it away, “Really?”

She nodded, waiting.

“I have all seven. And I don’t want to talk about it. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“And you were watching it because you missed me? I could have been here, actually me.” Then, looking down at her outfit, she pulled her raincoat closed. “Not that it would be that different. If you need to use pornography sometimes I can always go upstairs. I understand people have … kinks that they need to serve. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

Adam stood and stared at her. Finally, he smiled, “You really would do that, wouldn’t you? I fucking love you. Come here,” he opened his arms.

Kay pressed herself against him, her cheek on his chest, her arms around his narrow waist, taking his smell. Dust and violet mints. India ink and copper. The strange warmth, and the strange, almost vibration that he had in place of dull things like heartbeat or breath. He wrapped himself about her.

“If I am embarrassed by anything it's that I’ve been a bloody coward, not wanting you to come back. Afraid of losing control around you.” He sniffed her, “Have you been eating that disgusting garbage again, that cereal?”

“I didn’t have much food in.”

“Oh, fuck, baby, I’m sorry,” he groaned, kissing the top of her head. “I’m going to feed you right now. I think I figured out how to make that foul pasta thing that is a colour that exists  _ nowhere  _ in nature, that you like.”

“Mac and cheese?”

“Yes. But I remember cheese, that’s shit’s not cheese. Cows don’t do things like that.”

“Later.”

“Later? Aren’t you hungry?”

“Starving.” Kay took off her coat, unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse, shook out her hair, and lowered her glasses so she could look up at him over them. She blinked at him slowly and said in her most clipped and pedantic tones, “But first, Mr. Clarke, we need to discuss your late fees, and the rather … suggestive damage the copy of  _ Ars Amatoria _ you returned today. You’ve been very naughty with Ovid, haven’t you?”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
